as beautiful as the hardware is, I just cannot stomach buying another machine I can not comfortably replace the battery in. Either Apple returns to its earliest roots of making machines that are easy to repair, or find me and many others buying machines from the likes of Frame.work instead.
Is it difficult to replace the battery in these new models? I changed the battery in my 2016-ish macbook air in about 5 minutes, and it looks like my 2018 macbook pro is the same design.
It's extremely difficult (and risky) to replace the battery in any 2016+ MacBook Pro. In fact, it's so difficult, even Apple won't do it, so when you send a MBP in for a "battery replacement", they replace the entire top case instead of just the battery [1].
The Air models have different designs. As the other commenter pointed out, you're probably referring to the early 2017 Air, for which battery replacement is a breeze. The 2018+ Air has adhesive pull strips, making replacement relatively easy: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13%E2%80%9D+Retina+...
If Apple hasn't switched to adhesive pull strips for these models, it's very disingenuous to advertise that they were "Designed with the earth in mind" like this website says. The battery is the only "consumable" component in the laptop, so it's completely unacceptable for it not to be designed for replacement.
> the battery can be individually replaced in the new MacBook Air [...] In all other MacBook and MacBook Pro models with a Retina display released since 2012, when a customer has required a battery replacement, Apple has replaced the entire top case enclosure, including the keyboard and trackpad.
This implies that (at least from 2016-2019) they were replacing the entire top case assembly in MBP.
